The Reflections of Ambrosine eBook

IX

It poured rain again before the sportsmen returned,
and they were more or less wet and cross. Antony
went straight to his room to change, and so did the
two other decent men. But the commercial friends
stayed as they were, muddy boots and all, and were
grouped round the fire, smelling of wet, hot tweed,
when Mrs. Dodd sailed into the room.

“Wullie,” she said, sternly, “you’ve
no more sense than a child, and if it was not for
me you’d have been in your coffin these five
years. Go up-stairs this minute and change your
boots.” And off she sent him, but not without
a parting shot from Miss Springle.

“Mind you put on a blue velvet smoking-suit,
Mr. Dodd, dear. I do love gentlemen in smoking-suits,”
she said, giggling.

Tea was a terrible function. Oh, the difference
to the merry tea at Harley!

Lady Wakely, sleepily knitting and addressing an occasional
observation to her neighbor; the rest of the women
silent as the grave, except Miss Springle and Mrs.
Dodd, who sparred together like two cats.

The men could talk of nothing but the war news which
had come by the afternoon post.

There was a gloom over the whole party. How on
earth was I to escape from the oppression? They
were not people of the world, who would be accustomed
to each person doing what they pleased. They expected
to be entertained all the time. To get away from
them for a moment I would be obliged to invent some
elaborate excuse.

Antony had not appeared upon the scene, or Augustus,
either.

At last—­at last Lady Wakely put her knitting
in a bag and made a move towards the door.

“I shall rest now,” she said, in her fat,
kind voice, and I accompanied her from the room, leaving
the rest of my guests to take care of themselves.
I felt I should throw the cups at their heads if I
stayed any longer.

There, in the hall, was Antony, quietly reading the
papers. His dark-blue and black silk smoking-suit
was extraordinarily becoming. He looked like
a person from another planet after the people I had
left in the drawing-room.

He rose as we passed him.

“Some very interesting South African news,”
he said, addressing me, and while I stopped to answer
him Lady Wakely went up the stairs alone.